The Meaning Of Taylor Swift’s “Innocent” & The Kanye West Connection, Explained

Taylor Swift’s new re-recording Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) contains six previously unheard “from the vault” tracks — and an old deep cut she hasn’t acknowledged in over a decade. The Grammy winner wrote “Innocent” following Kanye-gate, when Kanye West famously stormed the stage at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to interrupt Swift’s speech after winning Best Female Video to proclaim that “Beyoncé made the best video of all time.” The world was outraged, and neither of their careers was ever the same.

In “Innocent,” Swift sends a message of forgiveness to the rapper, explaining that what he did to her does not define his entire life. “It’s all right, just wait and see, your string of lights is still bright to me,” she sings gently on the chorus. “Who you are is not who you’ve been, you’re still an innocent.” She compared the incident to losing balance on a tightrope, singing how “every one of us has messed up too.” The most glaring reference to West lies in the second half of the chorus, when Swift sings, “32 and still growing up now,” as he was 32 years old back when he stormed the VMAs stage.

On Speak Now, Swift included secret messages within the liner notes in the album’s CD booklet. For “Innocent,” she wrote, “Life is full of little interruptions,” nodding to West’s infamous interruption. The two mended fences years after the incident, and in a clever twist, Swift even presented West with the Video Vanguard Award at the 2015 VMAs, where their saga started. But all it took was one music video for their public feud to be reignited once again, so it’s not surprising if Swift can’t quite relate to the lyrics of “Innocent” anymore.

Swift premiered “Innocent” before the release of Speak Now by performing it live at the 2010 VMAs, the year after the debacle, without any prior announcement. West closed the ceremony by performing “Runaway” for the first time, which was positioned as a response to the incident, though it also addresses his behavior in prior relationships, warning others to “run away as fast as you can.” But since that night, Swift has seemingly distanced herself from “Innocent,” with her performance becoming difficult to track down on the Internet, even on her or MTV’s official channels.

Even more interestingly, Swift has not performed “Innocent” live since the 2010 VMAs, leaving it off of her Speak Now tour set list the next year and never appearing on her following tours. She hasn’t even brought it back as one of her nightly “secret songs” on the ongoing Eras Tour (but since she’s just extended the tour to August 2024, there’s plenty of time for that to change). This means that Swift re-recording “Innocent” for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the first time she’s even acknowledged the song publicly since 2010. Hearing “Innocent (Taylor’s Version)” nearly 13 years later when her re-recording of Speak Now comes out on July 7 is sure to be very surreal.